I Can, and I Do

Along with their greater safety for beach trips and golf courses, and lighter weight on backpacking trips, there’s another reason to value craft beers in cans. It’s one the breweries can’t extol—so I will.

A cold night, a dark cinema, and film in which there is lots of jolly eating and drinking. I have come to see “It’s Complicated” with a band of friends. The movie is laugh-out-loud funny. I reach into a largish purse, and pull out a plastic pint glass in which nestles a can of Oskar Blue’s Ten Fidy.

Position the beer, wait for a big laugh line, then psssst. I pour the inky stout into my glass—hey, I’ll bring it in a can, but I won’t drink it from a can. All around me, patrons are munching from barrels of bad-smelling popcorn and glugging down 64-ounce sodas. And there, in row M, I have a generous serving of a wonderfully satisfying imperial stout—from a can.

I’ve tried this trick before, with bad results. I brought a nice bottled IPA to “Lost in Translation,” then had to dig around in the dark for my bottle opener before I could open and pour it. I settle in to enjoy the beer and the film, only to knock the empty bottle over with my foot during a touching scene, and have to concentrate Very Hard on the screen as the bottle rolls gudda-gudda-gudda under every row of seats to the front of the theatre. Thus, my enthusiasm for the can.

I don’t sneak beer into theaters to protest the outrageous concession prices—though they are outrageous. It’s the selection that’s a problem—that, and the insult of having to pay $9.50 to see a grown-up film without the pleasure of grown-up beverages. At the local performing arts center, one can sip fairly decent wine or beer during “Mama Mia.” I’ve nursed a drinkable cabernet through the second half of “Swan Lake.” And the local independent movie venue offers a small but tasty range of craft beers, another reason they win my support.

The day the multiplex sells Bell’s Two Hearted next to the vats of Pepsi, I’ll patronize the concession stand. Until then, I’ll smuggle my contraband into the seven o’clock showing. See you at the movies.